Date: 6/30/25 5:26 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 30 June 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
4:38 a.m. (thirty-three minutes before sunrise). On the cusp between
nautical and civil twilight (birds are up and I don't need a flashlight to
walk the road). Fifty-four degrees, wind South one mile per hour, gusting
to two, not that I notice. Rising river fog slowly blots a colorless, clean
sky, creeping uphill, sifting through a sieve of branches and leaves.
Visibility reduced to several hundred yards; the outline of trees softens,
vanishes... a Polaroid in reverse. The sun sneaks into the sky, and
the atmosphere brightens. But much of the landscape remains hidden.
*Department of Flowers: *Peaking oxeye daisy. Fading red-flowering
raspberry. First black-eyed Susans. Rhododendron, gone by—an ordinary green
mound, but still a fortress for an inventive catbird—purple bouquets wilted
while I was away in the Northwest.
A hundred yards uphill, a deer manifests out of the mist, bolts across the
road, tail up—a clatter of gravel. Dog, lost in the latest edition of
odors, oblivious.
Awoke to caterwauling barred owls and chattering junco, 3:48 a.m.
Among thirty-six species of birds, scarlet tanager, rose-breasted grosbeak,
and American robin, a contrast of warbled phrases. Rapid, husky, pack-a-day
tanager. Sweeter, slower grosbeak. Familiar, ubiquitous robin, everywhere,
all at once. Warbling and red-eyed vireos. Nine warblers: ovenbird,
chestnut-sided, black and white, black-throated green, northern parula,
yellow, American redstart, common yellowthroat, and pine (in the pines and
voluble). Eastern phoebe chatty; eastern wood pewee and great crested
flycatcher (known neighbors, mute as marmalade). The proclamations of
crows. The silence of blue jays.
*Onward and Upward with Buntings: *Indigo bunting on an electric line,
faces south. Color and voice cut through the rolling fog. Benjamin Moore
lists 446 shades of blue, none of which is called *Bunting Blue*. The paint
giant missed a remarkable, irreducible shade. Darker than either an eastern
bluebird or a cerulean warbler. Darker than the sky. An almost neon color
equipped to stun.
I watched Lazuli buntings last week, singing in the crowns of sagebrush and
willows, in the canyons of central Washington. Sounded like an indigo,
looked like a bluebird (except for a conical bill), complete with reddish
upper chest. I hadn't heard a Lazuli in twenty-five years and hadn't
considered them a possibility in the folded barrens, east of the
Columbia River. But there they were, bolt upright and full of verve.
Singing dawn to dusk. How similar the song is to an indigo. How identical
the posture. How comparable the behavior. Plump, colorful songbirds hugging
the greenery alongside a cascading creek, voices rising above the falling
water.
It's no wonder Lazuli and indigo buntings interbreed at the zone of
overlapping ranges on the Northern Plains and the Desert Southwest. The
borderline between species can be messy. Darwin knew that.
